


Sweet as Tears, Bitter as Honey

by Esteliel



Category: Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Noncanonical Character Death, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:32:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/pseuds/Esteliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death. It was something he had thought about often, in those dreamy, disconnected hours when Fool's Delight melted sweet as tears, bitter as honey on his tongue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet as Tears, Bitter as Honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dea_liberty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dea_liberty/gifts).



Death. It was something he had thought about often, in those dreamy, disconnected hours when Fool's Delight melted sweet as tears, bitter as honey on his tongue.

Death seemed like a dream then, too. A dark country to explore with a child's innocent curiosity. Death was the sigh of the wind like a dark band of silk fluttering through the night sky, undulating into ever more fabulous monsters and beasts and faces that looked at him with scorn and need and rage and sometimes, sometimes that bitter, biting love that hurt like slicing open your wrist so that all the blood could drip out like poison to free your soul...

He smiled at the stranger who passed him, a careless invitation for pain or pleasure or death, here in this place where rotten fruit and dead rats lined the alley, and where death was more plentiful and bounteous as the litters of starved cats that hissed at him when he stumbled over decaying carcasses.

The stranger never noticed him, in that vain and self-absorbed way of the overproud swordsmen - men who strolled the narrow back alleys of Riverside with the arrogant swagger of the scarred tomcats who ruled fences and roofs here.

The man did not even seem to recognize that he was not alone, but of course, he would be, Alec thought dreamily. Men like that knew everything that happened around him. Men like him knew that men like Alec were no threat. Just an easy mark to kill and relieve of their coins...

The man stopped for a moment, snow settling on his shoulders before it melted on the worn, brown leather. Alec bit his lip with sharp, breathless need when a drop of blood ran from the tip of the swordsman's weapon, dripping onto the gray sludge of the street as quietly and beautifully as the falling snow.

 _Yes, now_ , he thought, and _please_ , and then _no, no, no, don't_ \- but the man took a step forward, and another, silent and majestic and threatening like the feline overlords of Riverside.

Alec shuddered against the dismal coldness of the wall behind him, almost reaching out for the stranger's blade-thin promise, but then he was gone, the heat of Fool's Delight on his tongue dissolving into the cold ash of the sludge beneath his boots. He followed, shuffling forward on weak legs until he reached the corner where the man had vanished, and where now, he saw with wide, dark eyes, red blood pooled and froze like a terrible flower.

The swordsman wiped his blade clean on his cloak with unbearable gentleness, so that Alec shuddered, silent and awed and achingly hard.

He watched.

There was a crystalline beauty to it all, like one of those exquisitely arranged paintings of old masters that might have hung in the now-crumbling houses of Riverside, before the nobles had moved to the Hill. The swordsman who was death and mercy and the unknown took his place for one silent moment in this frozen tableau of perfection where death and life were so entwined as to be barely distinguishable.

Alec shivered, but not from the cold. His blood was like molten gold in his veins, lazy and hot and as sweet as the Fool's Delight if the swordsman would spill it.

He almost moaned at the thought of licking his blood from the swordsman's fingers, his blade, the sound kittenish soft, and yet there was a sudden tension to the swordsman's shoulders. Almost he turned, and _yes_ , Alec thought again dreamily, _now, now_ , and then another man entered the alley with his own sword a gleaming icicle in the light of the moon.

If there was talk, Alec could not remember later. He dimly remembered a name that echoed among the crumbling buildings like a great bronze bell tolling with mourning finality. Richard, his mind would sing to him sometimes, later, when he diced in the worst taverns of Riverside, when he beckoned death as if he were a willful lover to seduce.

And oh, he was. Death was a swordsman; death bestowed his lethal caress with the heartbreaking grace of a cat and its remorseless beauty.

Time went in strange loops when Fool's Delight curled through his body, and the fight might have been over quickly. But to Alec, it went on for an eternity, with the ringing of slender blades like shattering ice in the air, and every soft breath the swordsman took like a caress to his face. There was talk - wasn't there always talk, Alec thought with hazy memory, remembering different talks, stern faces clad in black, the prattling of a once-lover, endless, endless talk at parties, all of it as nothing before this one, all-encompassing conversation that was sung out between two slender blades.

Alec almost laughed, remembering a dull tutor trying to explain rhetorics - ah, but if only he could have heard, if he could have _..._

Alec's fingers twitched, yearning to hold something, and then, like a sigh the swordsman's blade slid into his opponent's chest. Death was not harsh, death was not ugly or messy - the swordsman who was death was a dancer, a lover, and Alec trembled, feverish with need for the touch of those hands on his skin.

Dreams came then, with the bitter honey of Fool's Delight sticky and blood-warm on his thighs. When he woke from his dream, the swordsman was gone, and the once-bright blood was just another stain of dark, frozen slush on the ground. His laugh was too sharp and bleak, like the call of a crow, and he stumbled forward, aching and angry and lost. A door with a worn sign promised drink; he bristled with challenge like one of the alley's scarred cats when his entrance was met with silence and watching, assessing eyes.

He knew these people; he knew these inns by now, he thought, smiling with dangerous, bitter tranquility as he joined a game of dice. They eyed him greedily, these men, seeing his student's robes, and yet, no matter how often he had courted death in such a way, so far, it had always been him who won the throw against fate.

He idly traced a small coin sticky with beer, adding it carelessly to the pile of his winnings. "There's a dead man out front," he said, the biting accent as out of place as his robes, so that the men gave each other greedy, nervous looks. "A swordsman. Seems like he died rather quickly. Does anyone know anything about that here?"

When he looked around, he was met with sneers, though that changed when he pulled the one piece of silver from his stash and traced its worn edges.

"Look, I don't know who you think you are," one of the men trying to scam him with weighed dices said, his muscles tensing as he prepared to stand and, Alec realized with a delicious shiver of excitement, to rob him of his coin and maybe of his life in the process.

"Was St.Vier," a grimy boy said and scowled at the man opposite him as he snatched the silver from Alec's fingers. "Richard St.Vier. Best swordsman there is."

He turned around then, glaring at the room, and Alec shivered deliciously again. “Saw him kill mean Needlepoint Jack. The one who did for that fancy Hill wedding last week. Spent all his gold on the whores from Pretty Dan, then beat up Liza so bad she won't work for another month no more.” He spit on the ground, then snarled at another boy that had come too close.

“Good riddance I say. St.Vier, he don't beat up no whores. And he's better than anyone else here or on the Hill.”

The boy turned and smirked at Alec again. “You have a problem with him, forget it. He kills – like this!” He pointed forward with one finger, quick as a biting snake, hitting Alec's chest right above his heart. “One thrust right to th'heart. That's how he did for Needlepoint Jack. And that's how he'll do for you too.” He smiled meanly, then turned to slip out the door before any of the men could decide to take his newly earned silver, and Alec exhaled the name like a prayer as he imagined that slender blade piercing straight into his aching, empty heart.


End file.
